Nuns on the Bus urge return to our country's true origin

Originally Appeared in : 9823-11/8/18

As a purposeful means of attracting attention to what they considered the inequities created by the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, a dozen Catholic religious sisters set out on a 21-state pilgrimage called “Nuns on a Bus.” The tour ended in Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, Nov. 2 prior to the mid term election on Nov. 6.

The tour stopped in Savannah on Oct. 30, and the sisters presented their case to about 40 people gathered at the ConneXion Methodist Church on Skidaway Road in Savannah.

Sister Simone Campbell, SSS, (Sisters of Social Service) is the Executive Director of NETWORK and has led seven Nuns on the Bus trips. The tour goals are to get out the vote and to promote a Catholic understanding of civic responsibility.

Sister Campbell said, the Oct. 30 presentation was designed to demonstrate the disparity caused by the current income tax structures between five income levels (percentiles), the top one percent and corporations.

With sisters representing individuals ranging from 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent, 80 percent, and 100 percent of income level they moved off the base line and stretched down and around the center aisle of the church. The representatives of the one percent and the corporation lapped the room enumerable times.

Then with the implementation of the 2017 tax bill everyone took two steps backward. The top one percent and the corporation continued to lap the room.
It was a visually effective if unscientific method of making a point backed up in the Nov. 22, 2017 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops letter to the U.S. Senate outlining concerns about the Tax Cut and Jobs Act and its effect on the poor and working poor.

Sister Campbell said, “More important than all policy advocacy is changing how we talk about our nation. Let us come back from the brink of hyper-individualism and choose instead to speak of the needs of the whole community and share our nation’s true origin:”We the people.”